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PUBG Officially Takes Fortnite To Court

PUBG Corp, a subsidiary of BlueHole and developers of the massively successful PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, has, finally, taken Fortnite developers Epic Games to court. Over what, exactly? It's not quite clear, but the two firms have had a deep rivalry ever since Fortnite, in an attempt to build up its player base, launched its own version of the "battle royale" mode made so popular by PUBG.

Apparently, Epic Games was a partner of PUBG's at some point, making it all a bit suspicious that they created a very similar game. A representative of PUBG Corp said that they'd filed an injunction alleging copyright infringement against Epic Games. The lawsuit is based in South Korea, as is PUBG Corp.

It seems like only yesterday that Fortnite added its own "battle royale" mode following the immense success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Fortnite had initially launched as a co-op, base-building, zombie defense game, but in September of last year, while its player base was still just a small fraction of what it is now, they added a free-to-play 100-person battle-to-the-death mode.

There were plenty of similarities between the two games, from core concepts, to UIs, to weapons and items. That said, so much of the complained-about elements would have to be true of any given "battle royale" game. In fact, with E3 fast approaching, we can expect to see a few hundred more games borrowing the same formula. Heck, PUBG was hardly the first "battle royale" game - anyone ever play Minecraft's "Hunger Games" mod?

Interestingly, both companies are, at the highest level, owned by Tencent, the world's largest investment corporation. No matter who comes out ahead in this lawsuit, Tencent likely won't be affected too much. Instead, the most risk lies with the consumer - no one wants to see either of these game developers forced to stop making these games. In lawsuits, as in Alien VS Predator, no matter who wins, we lose.